


A Tolerance for Pain

by uniqueinalltheworld



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: AU-Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 07:34:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7792462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uniqueinalltheworld/pseuds/uniqueinalltheworld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It makes sense, his mother tells him when he's nine: Jack's such a physical person, of course his indicator would be his soulmate's pain. Jack doesn't have anything to say about it, really, he just scowls and winces as his soulmate falls down again. Alicia Zimmermann, whose heterochromia reversed itself upon laying eyes on Bob for the first time, because she’s more passionate about visual media, pats him on the shoulder with a completely insufficient amount of sympathy.  Jack's backside is sore for months as the falls keep happening, and he can only think that somewhere, his soulmate must be learning how to skate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tolerance for Pain

It makes sense, his mother tells him when he's nine: Jack's such a physical person, of course his indicator would be his soulmate's pain. Jack doesn't have anything to say about it, really, he just scowls and winces as his soulmate falls down again. Alicia Zimmermann, whose heterochromia reversed itself upon laying eyes on Bob for the first time, because she’s more passionate about visual media, pats him on the shoulder with a completely insufficient amount of sympathy. Jack's backside is sore for months as the falls keep happening, and he can only think that his soulmate must be learning to skate.

* * *

Bitty is eleven the first time he goes flying-- that's what it feels like at least. He's gotten a few bumps and bruises before, but nothing like this. His feet are planted firmly on the ground, but he feels like a giant hammer just knocked him into the sky, and he crumples, untouched by anyone at all, when he lands. 

After the nurse looks him over she calls Coach. Bitty tries not to feel too mortified as she relays what happened. He expects Coach to be angry, but he just claps Bitty on the shoulder and says, "sounds like you've got a football player in your future, eh?" He looks happy for him. 

Bitty had never realized the phantom pains didn’t make him weak before. 

He still whites out every time he goes flying, but he can get up now, and keep going.

* * *

Jack is twelve and running errands with his mother when he lets loose an ear-splitting scream. His hand is on fire. There is a long white stripe of pain across his fingers like a brand and it doesn't go away for what seems like hours. In reality it is probably only seconds, but he still feels it. He has no idea what his soulmate did to themselves but he's certain it will leave a scar.

* * *

Jack scowls into his omelette and wonders all over again why his soulmate insists on checking the doneness of their food by sticking their fingers directly into it. It _hurts_ and he’s already dropped his fork once this morning because of the sudden burns. He takes a gulp of his coffee without thinking about it, scalding his tongue and throat on the way down. He considers the fact that his soul mate is stuck with his burns, too, and feels a little guilty about it, wonders if he should take something to feel calmer.

* * *

Bitty stumbles on the ice midway through a salchow, and for one awful second he thinks he’s landed badly enough to hurt his ankle. But no--it’s not his ankle that’s hurt. It’s someone else’s far away. The pain had startled him enough to tip him over. He sucks in a breath as he bends his foot around. It had felt for all the world like a skating accident. Bitty gets up, squares his shoulders and faces Katya. She knows about his soul bond. He’d gone flying in practice before.

“Again,” she says, “this time no flinching.” 

Katya’s soul mark is on her face. It’s in Ukranian, just two stark black block letters creeping across her left cheek. Bitty looked up the word once, in an old Ukranian-to-English dictionary sitting in the back of his seventh grade English class. It meant “no.” 

Bitty winces a little as he put his foot back down on the ice. Katya waits, her arms crossed. There’s no pity in her eyes, no sadness. Only patience. 

Bitty grits his teeth and redoes the salchow, landing the way he’s supposed to this time. 

“Good,” says Katya. “Again.”

* * *

They try spanking, next. Jack is face down on the slightly greasy comforter of a hotel bed, and even though they both already knew, had both already seen the swirling words handwritten in English and Russian carved around Kent's biceps like a cuff-- _maybe, this time_ \--he's still disappointed when Kent doesn't flinch at the sting to Jack's flesh. 

It's one of the things he thinks about later that night when he's alone, wondering how many pills he'd need to just fall asleep.

* * *

Bitty is a little put out with his soul mate. He's not sure what that boy was doing--well, actually Bitty has seen enough porn that he's very sure what he was doing, but that's not the point-- but his butt has been stinging all day, and he's allowed to be grumpy about that. And maybe a teensy bit jealous. It's true most people don't wait for their soul mates to start...things, but it doesn't stop something possessive curling in the pit of his stomach at the thought of this faceless boy who plays football getting it on without him. 

Then, suddenly, the throbbing stops. There's no more flying. Bitty doesn't feel anything for a long, long time.

* * *

The hospital is very careful about the sorts of things their patients are allowed. Pills are measured, kept locked away. The food is industrial and bland and never requires so much as a butter knife in the way of cutting. Even the coffee is too lukewarm to burn on the way down. It makes Jack’s skin prickle with discomfort. He feels like someone is always watching him. He feels completely alone.

Sometimes, though, late at night, he feels like his hand is gripped in a bone crushing squeeze. Like his soul mate is trying to tell him they’re still around. 

There’s no more rough hockey or hot coffee, even after the hospital. Nobody seems to want to touch him. He switches to protein shakes in the mornings, builds up a new routine. Very little hurts him anymore. In fact, Jack hardly feels a thing.

* * *

Bitty is up at 8:30 in the morning, waiting. It used to annoy him every morning, that his soulmate couldn’t get his life together enough to avoid burning his tongue on hot beverages. Now he just waits, tries to convince himself that his soulmate simply learned better drinking habits. And quit football. And stopped fooling around in bed. 

Bitty’s heard people talk about what it feels like, losing your soul mate before you meet them. There was a whole documentary on it in health class. He knows he’s supposed to tell his family, seek therapy or something to fill the emptiness. He doesn’t though. He skates with Katya, longer hours and tougher routines than ever before. He joins a hockey team. He bakes and bakes and bakes and prays that all of a sudden he will go flying.

* * *

Jack is introducing himself to a new freshman, a girl named Larissa who blissfully hasn't heard of him, and asking what her major might be, when Shitty drops his beer. The pieces of the bottle fly everywhere, a few slicing nastily into Jack's shins. He sucks in a sharp breath. 

Shitty doesn't even apologize as Larissa and Jack turn to stare at him. "It's just--your eyes are brown." 

Jack looks blankly at Shitty before remembering he's spent his entire post-puberty life colorblind. 

"Art," Larissa whispers. She pats Jack absently on the chest without taking her brown eyes off Shitty's green ones. "I'm gonna major in art." 

They leave Jack alone to wipe the blood off of his leg and wonder if his soulmate had felt that.

* * *

Bitty actually cries in relief. His leg stings horribly and it’s the first phantom pain he’s been conscious of in years. Too sharp and too sudden to be his own false hopes. Within a few weeks, the flying starts to come back. When he sits down at the breakfast table only to cough his way through a scorched throat, he can’t even say he minds. 

Samwell university is not quite big enough to have a football team, but Bitty has a good feeling about it anyways.

* * *

Bitty is pretty sure his soul mate can only feel his physical pain and not his emotional distress. If he's wrong, he's going to have a hell of a time one day explaining why his mystery man woke up at 4am miserable and grumpy every single day for a year.

Bitty has a stupid block with checking, and he knows it. All sorts of other pains--needles, burns, even a bad fall, he can endure without even a reaction. Learning to control it had been simpler, back when he was flying all the time, than having to explain why he was once again crumpled in a heap in the middle of the practice rink. Katya and the Soviet calisthenics had helped. Maybe Bitty just responds best to tough love. 

He still can't stop himself from fainting, though, when he gets checked. It just...it reminds him of those three years. The ones where he didn't get hurt at all. In the few seconds he goes airborne, it's all he can remember. The moment it stopped. He's always whited out before he even hits the ice. 

Jack always checks him gently, though, or at least not too hard. Bitty feels the bumps all over his body, but it's like Jack can tell exactly how hard would be too far to go. Eventually, Bitty doesn't faint anymore, and he hardly even flinches when people come near him on the ice. 

He's grateful for that. More grateful that Jack is...not quite who he expected. kinder, maybe. More gentle, for certain.

* * *

Jack has hope, for a little bit. He _likes_ Bitty. Likes him more than he ever liked Kent. He had loved Kent. Loved him with all the fury of a sixteen year old's heart, and they still...cared about one another, he supposed, but he was old enough now to admit he hadn't ever really liked him. Jack thinks Kent wouldn't even blame him for the admission. He's pretty sure Kent didn't like him that much, either. 

Bitty, though, Jack feels good around Bitty. It's all he can think about when he sees Bitty walk by, talking animatedly to Lardo. It's why Jack's distracted enough to take a sip of too-hot black coffee, immediately spit it out where it steams on the snow as his tongue burns, then goes numb. 

Bitty is standing with his back to Jack, still talking. He doesn't flinch.

* * *

There was a night when there had been too much tub juice, and the talk had turned to soulmates. It had been enlightening for Bitty, to say the least. Shitty had grinned said something sappy about how Lardo put color into his world, and she'd punched him in the arm. 

Ransom and Holster were not...typical examples of a soul-bonded pair, but apparently they had been able to hear one another's voices inside their heads since they were able to talk. Bitty feels a tinge of jealously, thinking about being best friends with someone their entire lives. Not even a moment of doubt. He says as much, and Ransom and Holster just shrug and grin. 

"It's not always like that, man. I knew this kid at Andover who used to write notes on his arm. Apparently his soul mate could read them." Shitty shrugged, looking a little sad. "He wound up with their tattoo on his arm, and the occasional weird reminder note to like, buy lug nuts or some shit, but they never actually wrote him back. Tattoo was a hell of a thing to explain to his parents." 

Johnson, when asked about his soul mate had shrugged and said, "that's like, so external to the narrative, bro." 

The whole group stared at Bitty next, Jack's eyes boring into his. 

Bitty wasn't ready. Couldn't say "I spent three years thinking my soul mate had died and now I white out whenever I have a hockey injury." Not when this group of people was so new, not when he was already trying so hard to prove himself. Instead he had shrugged, sipped coyly at his tub juice. Said "I suppose we'll see when I meet him," and that was that. 

Everyone was too drunk to remember until the morning that Jack hadn't answered at all. Bitty wonders about it sometimes. Jack seems like the type of person to have something simple and classic, like a matching symbol or a name tattooed beneath his ribs. Bitty has never seen one, though. Mostly, he tries to pretend he's not looking for it. 

Mostly, it even works.

* * *

Lardo is the first person Bitty tells. His family knew about the identifier, of course, but Bitty never said out loud to anyone that he thought his soul mate had died. 

He's gotten past the hard part, to the happy ending when he sucks in a sharp breath. "This boy," he grumbles. Glad as he is that his soul mate is alive, he wishes that once in a while he would wait for his beverages to cool before scalding both their taste buds off. 

"Bits?" Lardo questions. 

"He drinks hot tea or scalding coffee or something and he never waits for it to cool," Bitty tells her. He’s long since trained his body out of jumping when it happens, but it's still hot. 

"Huh," is all Lardo says. Her face is calculating, and she seems fixed on something on the quad over Bitty's shoulder. Bitty turns but only sees Jack, holding a camera and trying to get the geese to stand still. 

"That indicator's like, wicked fucked brah," she tells him. Then, "let's go throw pastries at Zimmermann's geese." Bitty, who won't be able to taste the second half of his croissant for another hour or so anyways, can only agree.

* * *

The sick part of it is, Jack knows. He realizes in the millisecond between seeing Bitty go airborne and the moment his head makes contact with the ice, that he's in for a world of hurt, and it's just so unfair that this is the moment that he finally understands. 

The sicker part is that it would never have happened if Jack had just upheld his end of the promise. He had sworn to have his back.

The sickest of all is that even as he watches in terror, he's too far away to do anything but whisper "Bitty," and brace for impact.

* * *

"SHITS!" Lardo yells over the ice, and Shitty can hear her even over the sound of the fight and his own panic and the whistles being blown. He's there in a heartbeat. 

"Get Jack off the ice," she says, and her voice is deathly serious. "I don't care if you have to carry him, just do it."

"Jack?" Shitty asks, incredulous. Bitty's the one that got hit. Bitty's the one the medics are swarming to make sure he hasn't snapped his spine. 

"Shitty please."

She doesn't need to ask again. Shitty skates back out and finds Jack...frozen there. Swaying back and forth. He looks like he's the one that just took a blow to the head, and Shitty is so far beyond knowing what is going on, but he knows he can trust Lardo and so he puts Jack's arms around his neck and shoulders and toes him back to the box. Jack makes it nearly inside before bending double and puking on the ice. 

Lardo wouldn't be manager if she was afraid of puke, though, and she steps right over it, getting Jack's helmet off and looking into his eyes. "It's not physical damage, right?" She asks. "just the feeling?" She has to crane her neck upwards to look into Jack's eyes. 

"Bitty," Jack whispers helplessly. 

"Jack," Lardo snaps, "I need to know if you have a concussion." 

Jack takes a deep breath, and seems to pull himself into the moment. He's visibly shaken, and Shitty tries to remember the last time something like this made it past Jack's iron cast Media Face. "No. No real injuries. Just the feeling." 

He turns faintly green again and Lardo neatly side-steps just in time for the puke to splatter Shitty's skates. Honestly, he can't even be mad at her for it. Payback, though, for sure, when the time was a little more socially appropriate. 

In an attempt to not look at Jack dry heaving, Shitty turns to where Bitty is being helped upright on the ice. There's blood coming from one temple and he looks a little queasy, but otherwise he seems okay. Which can't be right. Shitty saw the hit, saw the sickening moment when Bitty's helmet bounced away. Anyone coming back up from that shouldn't look like they'd taken a minor hit. Not unless they were completely squirrel-fucking crazy and possibly just immune to pain. They should be seriously ill. Like puking on the ice unable to move. They should look like--like--Jack. 

And then Shitty gets it.

* * *

Jack is still heaving, and he looks a little like he's starting to cry. His knees buckle and Lardo is able to prop him up just long enough to stagger over to the bench. 

Shitty watches Bitty skate off the fucking ice. Unassisted. 

"Bruh," is all he can really manage to say. He puts a tentative hand on Jack's padded shoulder. "That indicator is wicked fucked."

"That's what I said," says Lardo. 

"You knew?" Jack croaks. His voice sounds wrecked and Shitty hands him a water bottle--Ransom's, maybe, he thinks--to let him wash his mouth out.

Lardo shrugs. "Wasn't sure. Guessed it might be you after he told me about his indicator. You drank some coffee and then his tongue got burned while he told me the story. But I wasn't gonna say unless I was sure." 

Jack looks up at her, wild hope in his eyes. "He didn't move. I thought--" 

Lardo gently takes Jack's head in between her palms and points it towards where Bitty is sitting upright, joking with the medic checking the size of his pupils while the coaches look on. "You think a little tongue burn is gonna phase him?" 

"Crisse," Jack mumbles. 

"Talk to him," Shitty recommends. "Maybe, uh, wait until he's a little more patched up first, though. He might not remember it right now."

Lardo nods, though Jack can't see it with her standing behind him. "Dude thought you were dead for three years. I'd say you need to at least say sorry about it."

They all end up driving to the hospital. Lardo, because Jack doesn't trust himself to drive though this much head trauma and emotion, Jack because of the head trauma and emotion, and Shitty because he's a huge sap and it's not like Jack didn't get to see his soul mate meeting, anyways. He’s earned deets.

They don't talk on the ride over. Jack has a tendency to get overwhelmed around feelings of any kind, and Shitty doesn't want to add to that. They let Lardo ask for directions to Bitty's room at the front, Shitty waiting to legalese it up if they get told they have to wait for visiting hours. 

There's no problem, though, and Jack doesn't speak until they're outside Bitty's door. 

"I don't--what do I say?" He asks.

Lardo shrugs. Shitty says, "the truth, man. He's been waiting to hear it." 

In order to give Jack and Bitty privacy and space, as all soul mates of course deserve, Shitty and Lardo wordlessly agree to snoop through the crack in the door that Jack left ajar. Shitty spares a moment in his brain to once more enjoy the fact that Lardo is just the right height to tuck under his chin so they don't have to take turns. 

Jack is very still, standing at the side of Bitty's bed despite the chair right next to him. 

Shitty thinks Bitty might be asleep until he tilts his head a little and let's his sliver of view move to encompass him, perched on the edge of the hospital bed. 

Hospitals, too, are a thing that makes Jack nervous. Shitty wills him to power through it. 

"I--" Jack's voice breaks and he starts again. Bits is patient with him. Always has been, even when Jack was being a total dick. "You have a scar on your left palm," he begins.

"It was the first pie I ever made by myself," Bitty says. His voice is soft and a touch confused. "I was so excited I forgot to use oven mitts. I put it all the way on the counter from the oven before I dropped it." 

"I know," Jack says, a touch ruefully. "You were seven and I was twelve. You learned to skate when you were four. You fell down all the time."

Bitty sucks in a sharp breath, and he must be getting it because he says "Jack--" 

"You get migraines," Jack goes on, "especially around finals week, and you test if a filling is hot enough by sticking your right ring finger into your pies." 

Bitty interrupts him. "You started playing contact hockey when you were sixteen. I always thought it was football. You drink black coffee when it's still too hot and you really like getting smacked around in bed." 

Lardo claps a hand over Shitty's mouth just in time to keep him from ruining the moment, though he still produces a snort that was probably audible to anybody paying attention. 

Jack Zimmermann blushes all the way to his hair line. "I uh," he clears his throat a little and doesn't elaborate on his statement. 

"And you were eighteen when--" Bitty starts to sniff. "I stopped feeling--for three years, and I thought--"

"I sort of did. Medically speaking, for about fifteen minutes I was dead." Jack says, unhelpfully and insensitively. Shitty is glad to see the whole soul mate thing won't change him. 

Bitty starts to cry in earnest, and Jack at least has his life together enough to kneel down and wipe at the tears. Bitty throws his arms around Jack's neck, sobbing into the junction of his shoulder. "When you cut your leg in the fall last year, I was so happy. That you hadn't...I'm just glad I got to meet you." 

Jack pulls away to look into Bitty's eyes. "I wanted it to be you. I kept waiting for you to show some sign whenever I--"

"I wanted you, too." Bitty murmurs, and leans forwards. Their first kiss looks chaste and tear-wet, and is interrupted by Bitty's concussion making him over balance and tilt suddenly into Jack's arms. 

Jack catches him, lays him gently on the bed and bends over to press his lips to Bitty's forehead, his cheeks, finally his mouth. 

Bitty tilts up into it, pulls away long enough to say, "I guess I can't really promise never to hurt you, but..." 

Shitty covers the sound of the closing door with Jack's laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Find me [on tumblr.](http://eugenideswalksintoabar.tumblr.com) I take prompts and commissions anytime.


End file.
